Tag Archives: Kiernan Shipka

Final Curtain

The Last Showgirl

by George Wolf

They may be a universe of genres apart, but Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance and Gia Coppola’s The Last Showgirl breathe plenty of the same air, both on the screen and on the red carpet.

Like fellow 90s icon Demi Moore, Pamela Anderson squeezes every dramatic ounce from the role of her lifetime, reigniting her career with a performance steeped in the personal experience of hard truths her character is suddenly forced to confront.

Anderson is Shelly, a longtime showgirl at the Le Razzle Dazzle revue in Las Vegas. Shelly finds purpose in the garish glamour of feathers, sequins and skin, and in her small circle of backstage friends. Dismissing the labels of just another “nudie show,” Shelly will not be denied the dignity she brings to each performance.

But after a three-decade run, the show’s producers announce plans to shut it down, leaving cast and crew to ponder what comes next. The question hits hardest for Shelly, who will soon be left to navigate Las Vegas without the leverage of youthful beauty.

And as the days tick down to that final curtain, Shelly is also juggling a strained relationship with her daughter Hannah (Billie Lourd), mother figure advances from young cast member Jodie (Kiernan Shipka), and a complicated past with Eddie (Dave Bautista), the show’s stage manager.

In her feature debut, screenwriter Kate Gersten provides important moments of authenticity that are doubtlessly rooted in her research time spent with real showgirls in Vegas. Coppola (Palo Alto, Mainstream) showcases it all with subtlety and respect, letting each character-driven moment (including a priceless cameo from Jamie Lee Curtis) personify a longing to savor something that is already gone.

But like Moore’s desperate Elisabeth in The Substance, it is Anderson herself who provides this film’s most authentic layer. She has lived a life celebrated for her face and body, but often mocked when she tried to offer anything else. That hard-won wisdom grounds Anderson’s performance, and makes Shelly’s steadfast defense of her chosen art form anything but laughable.

Coppola’s camera comes in close, and Anderson does not flinch, letting every line on her face tell a story. She hits enough levels of honesty to prove just as vital to her film as Moore is to hers, bringing a clear-eyed engagement that gives The Last Showgirl its – yes I’ll say it – substance, and her career its own reason to be re-born.

Brand New Bagmen

Red One

by George Wolf

Do I want to see J.K. Simmons as a swole, supercool Santa? Yes, I do.

That sounds fun, right? It does, so it’s a big letdown when Red One becomes a soggy holiday slog that feels like way too much like one of Tropic Thunder‘s parody trailers come earnestly to life.

It’s two days before Christmas at the North Pole and Callum Drift (Dwayne Johnson) lets Santa know that this will be his last midnight ride. Callum has been Papa Noel’s security chief for centuries, but this year the naughty numbers have finally eclipsed the nice, and he’s had it.

But just when Callum wanted out…dark forces pull him back in, by kidnapping Claus and hatching a Thanos-like plan to reign punishment down on anyone who’s ever so much as sniffed that naughty list.

So yeah, pretty much everyone.

Callum’s boss Zoe (Lucy Liu) turns to Jack O’Malley – the “world’s greatest tracker” – as an unlikely ally. Jack (Chris Evans) has never believed in Santa, is estranged from his own son (Wesley Kimmel) and doesn’t shy away from naughty, but Callum shoots him a steely glare and says those magic words.

“Let’s save Christmas!”

That one moment shows a glimpse of the self-aware romp that Red One might have been, but director Jake Kasdan and writers Chris Morgan and Hiram Garcia bury that promise under an avalanche of exposition and hokey CGI world building.

With Santa under wraps, we get the Johnson and Evans show, and while they’re both likable performers, the odd couple chemistry never quite clicks. Johnson’s uber-seriousness and Evans’s smart-assery both feel forced, while other notable performers (Bonnie Hunt as Mrs. Claus, Kiernan Shipka as the Christmas Witch and Kristopher Hivju as Krampus) are wedged into an already overstuffed narrative.

Any bits of momentum the film can build are undercut by constant speeches explaining the North Pole’s corporate-ready acronyms or Santa’s extensive mythological backstory. Kasdan’s pace is frustrating and inconsistent, with none of the winking fun that gave his Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story and Jumanji: The Next Level their most enjoyable moments.

The third act rallies a bit, as Simmons/Santa gets back in the saddle and requisite Christmas sentiments of human kindness and full hearts are unwrapped in full. But much like Santa for most Red One‘s two hours, the moviegoing joy is missing in action.

Killing Time

Totally Killer

by George Wolf

The quickest description is Back to the Future meets a mash of Scream and Happy Death Day. But Totally Killer offers a funhouse full of other genre wink-winks in a violent, raunchy, rollicking good time that often works in spite of itself.

Director Nahnatchka Khan and a writing team relatively new to features riff on everything from the Disney Channel to Sixteen Candles to Ace Ventura and beyond as a terrific Kiernan Shipka leads us on a life-saving mission back to the late 80s.

Shipka is Jamie Hughes (natch), a high school junior who is completely dismissive of her mom Pam’s (Julie Bowen) plea for caution on Halloween night.

See, back in late October 1987, three of Pam’s friends were murdered, each stabbed 16 times by a still-unknown masked assailant dubbed the “Sweet 16 Killer.” A true crime podcast host (Jonathan Potts) clues us in on the details, and the reasons why Pam is still skittish this time of year.

But Mom is one of the many townsfolk Jamie scoffs at, until her best friend Amelia’s (Kelcey Mawema) photo booth time machine turns out to actually work! So Jamie steps out of it and into ’87, where she’ll try to infiltrate her teen Mom’s (Olivia Holt) clique “The Mollys” (in tribute to Ringwald) and prevent those infamous murders from ever taking place.

And then, of course, she’s got to get back to…that place that is forward in time.

“I hate time travel movies. They never make any sense!’

So says the 80s sheriff (Randall Park) when Jamie tries to explain her predicament via Michael J. Fox, kicking off a self-aware string of consistently clever gags. And the veteran Shipka (Mad Men, The Blackcoat’s Daughter, Chilling Adventures of Sabrina) proves charmingly adept at navigating the two generations with determined sass.

Jamie’s got a mission and she won’t be distracted by these oversexed heathens and their lack of boundaries!

“Hey, inappropriate touching!”

“This mean girl schtick is really outdated.”

And don’t even get her started on the lack of wifi or having to watch her future parents get handsy!

Shipka is irresistible, and she goes a long way toward keeping this mix of blood, sex, nostalgia, a Mandela effect discussion and F-bombs on the rails whenever it flirts with flying off. And there’s plenty of flirting.

But even when things get stabby, Khan brings a bright and shiny touch. There are helpful reminders about who these oblivious teens are young versions of, and some earnest explanations about what Marty McFly got wrong about time travel.

Totally Killer wants to play by its own rules of inspiration, tell you about it in advance and then yell “high five!” when it all works out.

Don’t leave ’em hanging. It’s a bloody fun time.

Identity Crisis

The Blackcoat’s Daughter

by Hope Madden

Winter break approaches at a Catholic New England boarding school. Snow piles up outside, the buildings empty, yet Kat (Kiernan Shipka) and Rose (Lucy Boynton) remain. One has tricked her parents for an extra day with her townie boyfriend. One remains under more mysterious circumstances.

Things in writer/director Oz Perkins’s The Blackcoat’s Daughter quietly unravel from there – although quiet is not precisely the word for it. There is a stillness to the chilly, empty halls. But thanks to the filmmaker’s brother Elvis, whose disquieting score fills these empty spaces with buzzing, whispering white noise, a sinister atmosphere is born.

Like Perkins’s Netflix-produced follow up I Am the Pretty Thing that Lives in the House, Blackcoat’s Daughter breathes atmosphere and tension. Perkins repays your patience and your attention. You can expect few jump scares, but this is not exactly a slow-burn of a film, either.

It behaves almost in the way a picture book does. In a good picture book, the words tell only half the story. The illustrations don’t simply mirror the text, they tell their own story as well. If there is one particular and specific talent Blackcoat’s Daughter exposes in its director, it is his ability with a visual storyline.

Perkins is also a master at generating tension, a kind built on unsure footing. The filmmaker routinely touches on your expectations, quietly toying with them. He introduces characters and situations rife with horror possibilities, but equally plausible as images of safety: priests in a boarding school, cars on an icy road, James Remar in a motel room.

Remar’s mug can be associated with so many villainous characters that his presence in this film as a concerned father figure is perfect. There is one masterpiece of a scene between Remar and Emma Roberts – one that dances with to so many different rhythms of danger – and it perfectly encapsulates this filmmaker’s power over an audience.

When the slow and deliberate dread turns to outright carnage – when Perkins punctuates his forbidding atmosphere with hard action – he loses his footing just a bit. But Blackcoat’s Daughter is a thoughtful little horror show, its final act a fascinating rethinking of old horror tropes.

Pay attention when you watch this one. There are loads of sinister little clues to find.

Verdict-3-5-Stars